


from now on our troubles will be out of sight

by petit_chou



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Family Feels, Fluff, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 03:29:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17154461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petit_chou/pseuds/petit_chou
Summary: He’s woken up by the tugging of covers, sharp elbows and knees digging into his stomach and ribs, followed by a weight on his chest.Then, right in his ear, “Mommy, Daddy, wake up! It’s Christmas!”





	from now on our troubles will be out of sight

**Author's Note:**

> I intended to get this up by Christmas Eve. Alas. 
> 
> I'm not entirely sure what this is or where it came from, but I hope you enjoy the festive, tooth-rotting fluff regardless.
> 
> Happy Holidays, 'Philes.

It’s barely even light out, watery early morning sunlight filtering in through the curtains, when he’s woken up by the tugging of covers, sharp elbows and knees digging into his stomach and ribs, followed by a weight on his chest. Then, right in his ear, “Mommy, Daddy, wake up! It’s Christmas!”

“Oof.” Mulder pries open one eye and then the other, blinking as the face of his four-year-old comes into focus, a beaming smile and red curls sticking up all around her head. He yawns. “Morning, Pumpkin. Merry Christmas.”

She presses her hands to his cheeks. “Merry Christmas, Daddy. Time for presents!”

There’s a shift of the mattress as Scully roles over beside him. Eyes still closed, she reaches out with a mother’s intuition and wraps an arm around their daughter’s waist, tugging her down between them, making the little girl laugh. “You sure it’s time for presents, Anna-banana? I think it’s time to let Mommy and Daddy get another hour of sleep.”

Annie wriggles out from under her mother’s arm, sitting up and bouncing on her knees. “Nope! It’s time to open presents!” She tugs on Scully’s arm. “C’mon, Mommy, I have to see if Santa came.”

“How about you go brush your teeth and wake up your brother and we’ll be there in just a minute.”

“Okay!” Annie scrambles off the end of the bed, scurrying out into the hall.

Mulder rolls over to face Scully, kissing her, murmuring, “Merry Christmas, Scully” against her lips.

She returns the kiss before pulling back and shaking her head. “I have morning breath.” She laughs.

Mulder sits up, stretching. “You’re right. I don’t know how I’ve put up with you for so long,” he teases.

Scully pokes his shin with her toes beneath the covers, then cups the back of his neck, pulling him back down to her. “Smartass,” she says into his mouth.

Rolling onto his back, Mulder pulls Scully with him so she’s draped over him, one leg resting between his. Her hair slides from behind her shoulders, shrouding their faces in a red curtain as she hovers above him. “Does that mean I’m on the naughty list?” he leers, waggling his brows. His hand slides up beneath her flannel pajama top, fingertips ghosting feather-light up her spine.

She shivers. “That depends.” Her voice, raspy with sleep just moments ago, is husky with desire.

“On what?”

She kisses him, deeper this time, whispers, “On what else you plan to do with your hands in the next few seconds.”

“I think I can—”

Before he can finish speaking, their daughter’s voice echoes from down the hall. “Wake up Jackson! It’s Christmas!”

Scully drops her forehead against Mulder’s as he groans, “I think that’s our cue to get moving before the Uber-Scully opens all the presents by herself.”

Scully chuckles at the long-standing nickname for their daughter, and with one more too-brief kiss, they get up to celebrate the holiday.

-

Downstairs, they find Annie in the living room, staring agog at the presents beneath the tree. She turns when she hears their footsteps, running over. “Look, Santa came!” She points to the coffee table. “Rudolph ate the carrots we left, and Santa ate all the cookies. They must’ve been yummy.”

“I bet!” Mulder agrees, catching Scully’s eye. They share a grin. The chocolate chip cookies, which they ate last night while wrapping presents after Annie finally went to sleep, were, in fact, delicious.

“Can we open them now?” Annie pleads, practically bouncing off the walls with excitement.

“As soon as we eat,” Scully promises. Annie pouts, and Scully lifts her up, settling the girl at her hip. “I guess that means you don’t want any chocolate chip pancakes…”

“No, I do, I do!”

Mulder smiles as he watches them, knowing Scully probably won’t be able to keep lifting Annie for much longer; she’s been growing like a weed.

“Morning,” Jackson greets them when they walk into the kitchen. Holding his own mug, he nods at the counter where two others are waiting. “I made coffee.”

Scully greets their son with a kiss on the cheek. “Good morning, and thank you,” she sighs in relief, taking a long sip.

“I might need to inject this straight into my veins,” Mulder jokes as they gather ingredients for the pancakes.

“Yeah, no joke. _Someone_ ,” Jackson looks pointedly at the little girl who is busy eyeing the bag of chocolate chips, “woke me up. Loudly.”

Annie shrugs. “Mommy told me too.”

Scully mock-glares at Annie, tickling her playfully, making her giggle in delight. “Traitor.”

-

Annie can barely contain herself after breakfast, tugging on Jackson’s hand. “Let’s go! It’s time for presents! I’ve been waiting a million billion years!”

“Someone’s dramatic this morning,” says Mulder, he and Scully following behind.

“Yeah, wonder where she gets it.” Jackson smirks.

“Is it too late to take back all his presents?” Mulder jokes to Scully, purposely loud enough for their son to hear.

Annie pats Jackson’s arm sweetly. “Don’t worry, I’ll still give you the present I made at preschool.”

Jackson scoops her up easily. “Thanks, kid. That’s why you’re my favorite little sister.”

Annie giggles. “I’m your only little sister, silly.”

“Oh, that’s right.” And he spins them around and around until they collapse on the couch, dizzy and laughing.

Scully sets her newly-refilled mug on the coffee table, retrieving the stockings from the mantle and passing them out to their owners. All four of them squish together on the couch. Annie, feet dangling over the edge, upends her stocking onto the table, amazed with her treasures.

Among the candy and other small gifts are ornaments for Jackson and Annie, the year and their names engraved. It’s a tradition that Mulder and Scully began four years ago, Annie’s first-ever Christmas at just a few months old, and Jackson’s first Christmas with them. Jackson pulls Annie into his lap and they hold up the ornaments, Mulder snapping a picture with his phone, before they hang them on the tree.

Finally, Annie gets to open her presents from “Santa,” and she does so with gusto, leaving a trail of bows, ribbons, and wrapping paper in her wake like a tiny Tasmanian devil. “Thank you, Santa,” she says to the ceiling, as though her words will be carried to the North Pole.

-

The remaining presents opened and the living room cleaned of discarded paper and bows, Mulder, Scully, and Jackson are in the kitchen beginning to prepare for the early dinner they’ll be having in the afternoon.

Annie, who had been watching Christmas specials on T.V., runs into the kitchen, skidding on the hardwood floor in her socks. “Can we go out and play in the snow? Pretty please?” Mulder glances out the window at the snow-covered yard. There’s about a foot of snow if he had to guess.

“I can go out with her,” Jackson offers. “Unless you need me…?”

“Nah.” Mulder takes the knife and cutting board Jackson had been using to chop vegetables for a salad. “Go have fun.”

“Yay!” Annie runs in the direction of the living room, Jackson following behind, and moments later the coat closet opens and closes.

“Make sure she wears her snowsuit,” Scully calls to Jackson. “And her gloves!”

“Got it,” comes the reply and soon after, the front door and the squeaky screen door opening.

As Mulder and Scully work, they glance out the window every so often at the falling snow, and one kid or the other running by. Mulder wonders if Scully’s aware of the soft smile playing on her lips, and can’t resist wrapping his arms around her from behind, resting his chin on her hair.

She leans into him, her back against his chest. “When I was little, I was always jealous of kids in movies or on T.V. who got to build snowmen, make snow angels, go sledding.”

“No white winters in San Diego.”

“No.” She covers his hands, sliding her fingers into the spaces between his. “What about you? Did you enjoy playing in the snow as a kid?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely.” He thinks of his childhood, of Samantha, finding only nostalgia in place of the sorrow he felt for years when thinking of his sister. “We’d go outside and play with all the other neighborhood kids whose parents didn’t want them underfoot while trying to cook Christmas dinner. We’d team up, have snowball fights. Some of the boys would underestimate Samantha, until she clocked them right in the face with a snowball.” He smiles proudly at the memory. “She had good aim.”

“And how was your aim?”

He nuzzles her shoulder, nips at the skin exposed by the collar of her sweater. “Oh, I think you know just how good my aim is.”

“I walked right into that one, didn’t I?” Still, Scully tilts her head to the side to give him better access.

“Mmm-hmm,” he mumbles, pressing kisses to neck, her jaw, the spot behind her ear that makes her sigh. When she looks at him over her shoulder with darkening eyes, he bends to kiss her mouth, wondering if they have enough time to sneak upstairs or if—

_BAM!_

They jump apart, staring at the window where the remnants of a snowball slide down the glass. A dark-haired blur darts away.

“Oh, this means war.” The familiar competitive, determined spark that Mulder has loved for nearly 30 years appears in Scully’s eyes as she turns and heads toward the living room, Mulder following behind with a grin.

“Go get ‘em, G-woman.”

-

Outside in their winter gear, they encounter footprints marking the white snow, but no sign of their kids. Quickly, they start gathering ammunition. They’ve formed a decent pile of snowballs, when they catch sight two faces peering around the porch, then ducking back to the side of the house. Annie’s voice carries over to them. “Uh-oh, they saw us. Hurry, we gotta make more!” She hasn’t yet perfected the art of whispering.

Biting back a smile, Scully gestures for him to go up on the porch while indicating that she’ll sneak around back.

On the porch, he ducks beneath the railing with his pile of snowballs, and sure enough, a moment later he spies Jackson and Annie, both armed with their own, cautiously returning to the front yard. They look around suspiciously, and that’s his cue to attack.

“There he is, Jackson, get him!” Annie shouts both lobbing snowballs that miss him as he ducks. When Mulder’s nearly out of snowballs, he sees Scully creeping up from around the house, and he races off the porch to act as backup. Jackson lobs a snowball at him that just barely misses, before whirling around as a snowball connects with the back of jacket.

Scully smirks.

Then snowballs are flying from every direction, the air filled with cheers and shouts and shrieks of laughter.

Annie can’t throw very far yet, but when she tosses a snowball at him from a few feet away, and Mulder makes sure to take his time trying to get out of the way. When it hits him, he dramatically clutches his chest, gasping, “Oh, no. She got me,” as he sinks to his knees before falling backwards into the snow.

Annie giggles, flopping on the ground beside him.

“Good work, kid!” Jackson praises, but his distraction costs him, allowing Scully to get one last shot in, claiming victory. “Crap.”

“Never let your guard down,” she says.

“That’s right,” Mulder agrees. Then he tugs on the hem of her coat, so she falls, partially on top of him, and partially in the snow. He sits up, taking her with him, brushing snow out of her hair, laughing at the glare she gives him.

Clearly, she isn’t too mad, because she leans in, murmuring, “Oh, you’re gonna pay for that later.” Her breath is warm on his chilled skin.

He tightens his arm around her, pulling her more snuggly into his side. In a low voice, he whispers, “Promise?”

She responds by pressing her cold nose beneath the collar of his coat, making him shiver. Then she jumps up, pulling Annie to her feet, heading back toward the house. “Let’s go finish making dinner, hmm?”

He stares after her.

Jackson rolls his eyes, holding out a hand to help him up. “You guys are ridiculous, I swear.”

-

The warmth of the kitchen thaws their cold fingers and toes, and soon they’re all sitting down eat, famished after the snowball fight.

Scully tells a story of a childhood Christmas, and Jackson chimes in with one of his own, about a time when he was maybe five or six, and decided he was going to stay up all night to meet Santa.

While Mulder loves to learn these things, and knows Scully he does, too, he can’t help but be reminded of all they’ve missed out on with their son. Dozens of Christmases, birthdays, Halloweens, first days of school that they have no memories of. Still, Mulder reminds himself, Jackson is here now and they’ll likely have many more Christmases with him than they had without.

He takes Scully’s hand beneath the table, marveling at just how lucky they are.

-

“Daddy, will you tell us a story?” Annie asks, climbing up on the couch.

A fire burns in the fireplace, warming the living room where they’ve all retreated after dinner. Mugs of steaming hot chocolate and a plate full of the remaining chocolate chip cookies sit on the coffee table.

“Of course, Pumpkin. Which one?” He nods in the direction of the bookshelf. “ _The Night Before Christmas_?”

Annie takes a bite of her cookie, chewing thoughtfully. “No. A real story,” she decides.

After thirty years, he and Scully have no shortage of those, which Annie knows quite well. She loves to hear about their old cases. While most other young children hear fairy tales and nursery rhymes, Annie’s bedtime stories are fantastic tales of her parents chasing real monsters in the dark.

And there’s one such story that’s perfect for today. “How would you like to hear about the time me and your mom went ghost-hunting in a haunted house on Christmas Eve?”

Annie is instantly intrigued. Even Jackson, reading one of his new books in the armchair, ambles over to join them, sitting down the floor nearby.

“A _real_ haunted house?!” Annie exclaims, climbing into Scully’s lap. “You saw _real_ ghosts?”

“Yep,” says Mulder, at the same time Scully says, “No.” She meets his gaze over their daughter’s head, grinning, a playful glint in her eyes. She knows what they saw that night, has seen too much not to believe, but even still, they often slip back into these roles, skeptic and believer, debate their own personal form of banter.

“We did,” he assures, winking at Annie.

The little girl grins, chocolate smeared all over mouth. “Where was I?” she asks innocently.

“You weren’t born yet, Sweetheart,” says Scully, rubbing her back.

Annie looks over at her brother. “What about him?”

“Nope.” Mulder shakes his head. “Not for a few more years. This happened in 1998.”

“Wow,” Annie says solemnly. “That’s forever ago.”

Mulder pretends—mostly—to look horrified. “Hey, are you calling your parents old?” He lunges across the couch, tickling her ribs, making her squeal with laughter. “Who just beat you guys at a snowball fight, huh?”

Annie smiles innocently. “Mommy.”

Now it’s Scully’s turn to throw her head back and howl with laughter as Mulder pouts.

Jackson snorts. “Ouch. Owned by a preschooler. That’s gotta hurt.”

“Punk.” Mulder whips a throw pillow at his son, who easily dodges it, still smirking. “So no one wants to hear the rest of the story?”

“No, we do!” Annie stills, leaning back against her mother. “I wanna hear about the ghosts.”

Mulder clears his throat. “It was a time of dark, dark despair…” He launches into the same dramatic story he told Scully that night, twenty-four years ago. She’s smiling softly, and he knows she’s picturing just what he is, the two of them sitting in his car in front of 1501 Larkspur Lane on Christmas Eve as he weaved the tale of two star-crossed lovers.

-

“…And then when we realized it was all a trick, we were able to get up and run out the door.”

“’S a good story, Daddy,” Annie slurs, half-asleep now, her eyes closed, head lolling against Scully’s chest. “Tell ‘nother one.”

Scully strokes her hair gently. “I think it’s time for bed, Sweetheart.”

“Not tired.” Her yawn belies her words.

Mulder offers to take her, carrying the girl upstairs. She’s asleep in his arms before they make it to the top of the stairs.

Heading back down the hall soon after, he goes into his and Scully’s bedroom, seeing the low light coming from inside.

Scully is sitting on the edge of the bed. “She asleep?”

“Out like a light. Jackson?”

“Went to his room. He says goodnight. I think he was pretty worn out himself.”

Mulder sits beside Scully on the bed, his hand coming to rest briefly on her knee before sliding just a little higher. “And are _you_ worn out?”

She presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth, trailing her lips to his ear, whispering, “I hope to be.”

He slides his hand further up her thigh. “Am I still on the naughty list?”

Scully removes his hand, and when he groans, she grins deviously, swinging one leg over his, knees on either side of hips. She drapes her arms over his shoulders, brushes her nose against his. Between too-short kisses she says, “You better be.”

-

“I wanted to ask you stay that day.” He doesn’t specify which day, trusts that she understands.

“Why didn’t you?”

His hand rubs lazily up and down her arm. “When Maurice was trying to profile me, he said I was afraid. And he was right. I was afraid. Not of being alone, like he said, but of losing you. Afraid that if we tried to be something more, I’d only end up pushing you away, ruining what we already had.”

“I was afraid, too,” Scully admits into his bare chest, into the dark. “I remember wanting you to ask me to stay. Wanting to be brave enough to ask if I could.” They fall silent for a time, and he thinks she’s fallen asleep, her breathing deep and even, until she wonders aloud, “Do you think they’re still there?”

“Maurice and Lyda?”

“Yeah.”

Mulder shrugs, combing his fingers through her hair, slightly tangled from their earlier activities. “I wouldn’t be surprised.” He grins. “We could always go check it out next Christmas Eve. See for ourselves.”

Scully snorts. She shakes her head, her hair tickling his nose. “I think I’ll pass. Despite how…memorable that was, I’m not up for a repeat performance. However…” She shifts against him, toes brushing his calf, a fingertip trailing down his sternum. “I may be up for repeating a different performance.” Her eyes are luminous in the moonlight.

“That can definitely be arranged.” He rolls over on top of her pulling the blankets over their heads, sealing in the warmth and the sound of her laughter.

Scully wraps her arms languidly around his neck, pulls him down for a kiss. “Merry Christmas, Mulder.”

And, oh, it is, it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you made it to the end of this without developing a cavity (but maybe see your dentist after, just in case?).
> 
> If you'd like to talk The X-Files, fic, or anything else, I'm on tumblr @never-ever-eat-pears, where I'll hopefully cross-post this in the next few days.


End file.
